If each film in the “Eros” trilogy received its own star rating, it might go something like this:

“The Hand,” which open this trilogy of stylized ruminations on desire and the erotic, would get three stars. The amusing “Equilibrium” would rate 2 1/2.

Unfortunately, “Eros” metes out its pleasures in descending order. And with Michelangelo Antonioni’s “The Dangerous Thread of Things” – 1 1/2 stars – the best was not saved for last.

What a shame. The trilogy – with each film helmed by a different director – was conceived as a tribute to Antonioni (“L’Avventura and “Blow-Up”), who after a debilitating 1995 stroke struggled to return to directing.

His contribution here, adapted by longtime collaborator Tonino Guerra from a collection of Antonioni’s stories, follows American Chris and his Italian wife, Cloe, as they appear headed toward the end of their relationship.

“Dangerous Thread” overflows with the chatter of an exceptionally privileged couple processing, blaming – anything but hearing each other. Chris’ brief interlude with Linda isn’t any more satisfying.

More amusing is Steven Soderbergh’s “Equilibrium.” How much of a hoot you find this agile riff on the dream of an ad salesman may depend on how funny you find the slightly worn gag about a distracted psychiatrist (Alan Arkin) and his new patient (Robert Downey Jr.). What exactly does an analyst do when you’re lying on the couch yammering? Listen? Sleep? Or something far more idiosyncratic, even naughty?

“Equilibrium” swings between the saturated color of Penrosecq As the wracked ad exec, Downey Jr. is at his fast-talking best.

Still, it’s Wong Kar Wai’s tale of the ongoing interactions between a courtesan and a tailor, set in 1963, that delivers on the promise of this anthology’s title. The director of “Days of Being Wild” and “Chungking Express,” knows how to create an atmosphere that weathers the possibilities and impossibilities of erotic yearning.

Told with the kind of masterful economy Anton Chekhov brought to his short stories, “The Hand” follows Miss Hua (Gong Li) and Zhang (Chang Chen). The two meet when the Master Jin sends his apprentice to fit one of his best customers. The young man sits, waiting as Miss Hua concludes some frisky business with her longtime lover Zhao.

When Zhang at last enters her room, Miss Hua sees him for the virgin he is. “Never touched a woman before, have you?” she says. “Then how can you be a tailor?” The embarrassed Zhang doesn’t reach for her; she caresses him. For Zhang – and the audience – that illicit touch floats above years of fittings.

It is fairly melancholy news that the works of two of Antonioni’s admirers outshine the master’s segment.

His symbolically burdened vignette holds but one pleasure.

Toward its end, Cloe tells Chris on the phone that their horses have gotten out again. First you sigh – ah, the problems of the rich and insufferable. Then you think, boy, Tuscany sure is lovely.

In Washington, there may be no more loathed profession than that of the lobbyist. The political thriller “Miss Sloane” paints a cynical behind-the-scenes picture of the great lengths to which paid advocates will go to advance a cause.

For an Oscar contender, “Silence” is still remarkably mysterious. Is Martin Scorsese’s decades-in-the-making passion project any good? We don’t know, because it’s only now screening for critics, and even then only in Los Angeles and New York.